A museum is refusing to take down a 'sexualized' portrait of a young girl — and people are furious

Balthus at Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland, a year before he died. AP Photo/Beatrrix Stampfli

A viral petition is asking the The Metropolitan Museum of Art to move or change the signage for the Balthus painting "Thérèse Dreaming."

The Met defended the painting and said it provides an "opportunity for discussion."

Balthus's paintings have been controversial for decades because of how they sexualize young women.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is refusing to take down a painting after nearly 10,000 people signed a petition saying it should be removed or recontextualized because it "depicts a young girl in a sexually suggestive pose."

"It can be strongly argued that this painting romanticizes the sexualization of a child," she wrote in her petition. "The Met is, perhaps unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children."

The museum isn't moving the painting, Alexandra Kozlakowski, a publicist for the Met, told INSIDER.

At the moment, we don't have any plans to make changes based on the request of this petition," Kozlakowski wrote an an email.

The Met also released a statement explaining its decision.

"Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation," the Met's chief communications officer, Ken Weine, said in the statement, provided to INSIDER. "Visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present and encouraging the continuing evolution of existing culture through informed discussion and respect for creative expression."

"Thérèse Dreaming." REUTERS

A representative for Balthus's estate didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.

Merrill, through a spokesperson, declined to respond to INSIDER's request for comment.

Balthus's paintings have been controversial for his entire career.

The painted — whose real name was Balthasar Klossowski de Rola and who died in 2001 — has been a controversial figure in the art world for decades. Many of his paintings show highly sexualized depictions of young girls.

His 1934 work "The Guitar Lesson" was one of his first to scandalize his peers. When it was displayed along with "Thérèse Dreaming" and other Balthus paintings at a special exhibit in the Met in 2013, a plaque warned readers that the paintings were disturbing in nature.

"At its 1934 debut in Paris, it was shown for fifteen days, covered, in the gallery's back room," wrote the art critic Jerry Saltz in 2013. "In 1977, it appeared for a month at Pierre Matisse's 57th Street gallery. It has never been exhibited again, as if it were some metaphysical equivalent of the cursed videotape in The Ring that kills anyone who views it."

A woman looking at at the painting entitled "Thérèse Dreaming" at the Met's 2013 retrospective. REUTERS/Keith Bedford

"Thérèse Dreaming," which was finished in 1938, was Balthus's first painting of an underage model, according to the Village Voice. Balthus toned down the eroticism in his paintings later in his career, but he remained defensive of it.

"The impropriety—timeless and realistic—was in his imagination," the New Yorker's Judith Thurman wrote. "But you owe it to the art to examine the nuances of your discomfort. That's where his genius lies."

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